Episode Ep 661 September 10, 2026 1 hr 27 min

YC Demo Day, Spoon = Bent (Again), iPhone Duo Reactions | Garry Tan, Om Buddhdev, Karen Serfaty, Antonio Li, Edward Ge, Alfredo Gonzalez

From TBPN John Coogan & Jordi Hays

(01:47) - The Future of AI
(10:57) - AI Safety Takes Over the Timeline
(12:48) - Spoon = Bent (Again)
(17:54) - iPhone Duo Reactions
(24:17) - Garry Tan discusses Y Combinator’s growing focus on hard tech and how AI enables small teams to build ambitious hardware, software, defense, and gaming companies with fewer resources. The Y Combinator CEO predicts AI-native startups will outcompete established firms through agentic workflows while emphasizing practical cybersecurity solutions over speculative AI-safety debates.
(43:56) - Om Buddhdev, co-founder and CEO of Olam Labs, discusses building realistic reinforcement-learning environments and training data to evaluate AI behaviors such as deception, collaboration, and negotiation. He highlights data and compute as key bottlenecks to AI progress, explains Olam Labs’ benchmark-driven business model, and expresses cautious optimism amid growing AI safety concerns.
(52:55) - Karen Serfaty discusses Agent Card, a payments platform that enables AI agents to use consumers’ existing credit cards safely. He explains how its Vault and purchase API help personal-assistant companies securely store cards, navigate merchant websites, and complete online purchases despite anti-bot barriers.
(01:00:16) - Antonio Li discusses Nori Robots’ affordable, San Francisco-built humanoid robot, designed for developers and capable of handling most household tasks through LLM-powered controls. He highlights its $1,688 price, simple claw-based design, potential applications in homes and service industries, and plans to scale production to 400 robots per month.
(01:09:02) - Edward Ge discusses founding Exosat, a Singapore-based company developing sovereign satellite infrastructure as an alternative to U.S. and Chinese networks. He outlines plans for an 11,000-satellite constellation, globally flexible supply chains and launch providers, and serving countries seeking greater technological independence.
(01:15:15) - Alfredo Gonzalez discusses Omanta, an AI-powered personal research lab that helps patients and clinicians analyze genomic data, understand tumor biology, and identify potentially overlooked therapies. He explains that inadequate healthcare data infrastructure is a major barrier to AI progress and shares that Omanta has reached $319,000 in monthly recurring revenue while serving more than 150 patients.
(01:20:20) - 𝕏 Timeline Reactions